I love my church. I love how Trinity does everything with the highest levels of Integrity.
Let me list for you the ways:
We are one of the only churches in Lubbock that submits to extensive financial auditing by an outside financial agency. I’m not kidding. Every year we open the books, provide office space, and let the auditors share our work space to make sure that we are continuing to operate in a responsible and legal way.
We hold every individual ministry responsible to a stringent set of values, and yearly goals. I’ve never heard of a church that spends such massive amounts of time making sure that we are continuing to stay relevant to our community and church members. We critique, praise, change, and evaluate all areas of ministries yearly. We are committed to make the best use of our time, and make sure that we are doing all things to fit the Vision, Mission, and Values of our church.
We give pastors and senior leaders in our church sabbatical at specific intervals of their employment time. It’s built into the employee handbook!
Probably the most important part of our church culture maintaining a high level of Integrity is attributed to our Senior Pastor, Carl Toti. Pastor Toti has a unbelievably high level of integrity, and provides my family with a great shelter of protection from all that would seek to destroy the work of the Lord that we are doing here in Lubbock. In his 10 years at Trinity, he as guided this church to new levels and is continuing to push us to new and exciting places for the future. There are few men in this world more worthy of being followed than my Pastor. Most of our integrity as a church begins and ends with this man and his family; and he has proven to be a steady hand to lead us forward.
Last week I did a special interview with Children’s Ministry Academy. They spoke with me at length about some of the things we are doing at Trinity Church in Lubbock to reach parents, kids, and our community. It was a great conversation, and you can go right now and listen to a few minutes of our talk today. If you sign up with Children’s Ministry Academy, then you’ll have the option to listen to the entire talk.
This is the most recent Kidsplace service video announcement at Trinity Church, in Lubbock, TX. It’s edition #1 of a project to get the word out to our congregation that we have age-specific programming for kids every weekend! Gina spoke about this here, but sometimes people fail to even know we have programming for kids every weekend. Or if they know, they tend to think of what they may have experienced when they were kids. More than once I’ve heard someone that visits our areas say, “I had no idea you guys had so much fun here with the kids!”, or I’ve heard “I wish we did things like then when I was a kid!”
We will be running these videos throughout the next few months. They are only 30 seconds in length, and are designed to fit along with whatever video announcements the church is running in weekend services. They are not designed to be stand-alone. They will also be used over and over throughout the year. Make sense?
We outsourced the work to a local place here in Lubbock. All videos were filmed, created, and designed by Kevin Rhodes over at Dream Taxi.
Earlier I wrote the Introduction about the issue at hand in our Children’s Ministry about what to do with our Kindergarten age children as they transition between learning styles. I said that I thought there were 3 milestone questions to consider.
#1 What does Kindergarten at their school look like?
When I was a kindergartner there was a separate Kindergarten building in our city that only housed the 5-6 year old crowd. But, in Lubbock, TX the Kindergartners attend school with Elementary students up to 5th grade. So the trauma and shock that I felt in 1st grade, isn’t the same for 1st graders in Lubbock. It’s more of a Kindergarten experience. Kindergartners in Lubbock are use to being on a bus, being dropped off into long hallways, and attending PE classes twice a week. If I’m not careful, then I plan around an educational model used 30 years ago, and not what my kids in my city are accustomed to.
What does this mean for me? It means that maybe moving Kindergartners to the Elementary environments at our church, might not be as eventful as I think it is. The kids that I think may NOT be ready for a change, are actually overdue for a change.
In your city it might look different. You might work mostly with homeschool children, or maybe the kids at your church attend a Kindergarten center, or maybe your parents just don’t want the status quo of these transitions and milestones tampered with. Whatever the situation, it’s worth evaluating what is unique about your location when it come to Kindergarten learning.
I’d love to hear about the different Kindergarten formats you have. Do share!
This is my recap of the past few weeks. It’s not a brain dump, since I don’t usually carry more than baseball statistics in my brain and there are no baseball statistics included in this Friday Bag.
I dedicate this video to my wife, who informed me after 11 years of marriage that she no longer liked Chicken Wings.
I’ve been in 3 different creative meetings this week at church. At some point they will figure out that I’m not nearly as creative as I am opinionated. And on that note, I want to say that I really love my church. I work with some real creative people, and can’t believe sometimes that I work in a place like this.
Every Sunday I post a twitter recap from the previous week. What say you about those postings? Do you hate them as much as me?
I’m 82 days into a 90 day project, and I can smell the end coming. I’ll recap what it is when I figure out an easy way to talk about it online.
Starr and I are 7 weeks into Financial Peace University, and so far so good. We have the obligatory student loan debt, and what we like to call “Graduate School Associated Debt” on a credit card. If we can stick to Dave’s plan, I’m thinking we could be debt free sometime before I die. Of course, I’m planning on living a long, long, long time.
I’ve got some friends coming to visit from Austin this afternoon. I haven’t seen them in years, but they have a kid running in a High School Cross Country regional meet here on the South Plains. It’ll be good to catch up.
Speaking of Austin, Starr saw a shirt yesterday here in town that said, “Keep Lubbock Normal.” I’m thinking I should make a shirt that says, “Keep Lubbock Flat!”
I’ve been asked to be a part of the Network Technology Manager interviews here at Trinity. (In a previous life, I was an IT Manager…) In the last month, I’ve been in 11 interviews. I did 6 on Wednesday and Thursday alone. I have so many things to say about this, but I’m going to let it go. I do have one thought…. Why would you apply to work at a church if you’re not a Christian? I know that being a Christian does not make a good IT Manager, but still it baffles me…
I hired a Part-Time Elementary Ministry Coordinator a few months back; and it has been a great move for Trinity and personally for me. Not having to be at every single church function as it relates to Children, has been a needed break for me and my family. However, she’s expecting a baby any day now; so I’ll be back to the grind until she returns from her Mommy break.
The Fall Festival was a huge success last Saturday Night. I’m estimating about 100+ volunteers showed up to help (many of them at the last minute) and about 1,500 people partook in the festivities. I’m still philosophically trying to make up my mind about why we do these events, but for what it’s worth the Fall Festival in Lubbock, TX is alive and well!
At some point in the past few weeks, I have become the Apple go-to-guy for everyone on staff at the church. How did this happen?
I’m the “Mystery Reader” at Ryan’s class this afternoon, and I’m so looking forward to visiting his classroom. He doesn’t know I’m coming, but has gotten clues all week about how it may or may not be. I got to do it a few weeks ago and it was a blast.
If you are disturbed by my frequent use of semicolons and commas; then, please read another blog. The same thing goes for my use of apostrophe’s. Thank You. (and yes I overused them in this sentence to make a point…)
I’ve been asked to lead a Christmas service for a Foster Care agency here in Lubbock. I’m not sure they asked for the right person. I tried to make them understand that I don’t juggle ornaments, nor will I be dressed as a Christmas tree.
New Favorite Website of the Week: I’m loving http://www.setlist.fm It’s a collection of concert setlist, with included Youtube Music videos and lyrics. It’s a super awesome way to relive past concerts, and catchup on currently touring concerts. (And BTW, Kenny. I can’t find any 1980′s-circa Carmen concerts listed, so when you have the time go ahead and submit those would ya?)
